I have been missing Chatham

After a two year hiatus, we are resuming our annual trek to Cape Cod, to the beautiful town of Chatham, where we have rented a home to spend a week reading, going to the beach, eating fried clams, and visiting with our friends and family who either live there or have journeyed there to visit with us.

We made the decision after the trip in 2013 that we wouldn’t  go the next year to the Cape. It was a combination of things that brought us to this decision, but we were both comfortable with having made it and nevertheless sad with the finality of it.

The rhythms of that year were disrupted by our decision. The Thanksgiving weekend, when I usually began the rental process, writing to the realtor to secure a lovely little house we had had for the past three years, came and went without the frisson of anticipation of being flat out on the beach with the languorous sun lapping at my legs.

Then in April, when usually it was time to send the second half of the deposit, and book the plane tickets, the rental car and alert our family and friends, there was instead, just the familiar cascade of shows at work, but no summer vacation on the horizon. That time went by without the flurry of  details coming together with a satisfying sense of organizing a pleasurable and familiar trek.

During the intervening two years, as our usual dates would approach, I would get blue about missing seeing our sister Kate, and missing our annual whale watching trip from Provincetown. Ice cream at the Schoolhouse ice cream Shop, with it’s quirky decorations.  Sweaty long bike rides along the bike path which ran just off the road behind our house. Walking down to the beach and getting caught in the rain on the way back.

Creamy Clam Chowdah from the Chatham Squire restaurant, and breakfast at the Hanger B restaurant overlooking the one runway of the Chatham airport, usually more trafficked by geese than by airplanes. AAA Baseball games in the late summer sun with the sound of children playing in the playground behind the bleachers, oblivious to the game. Years ago, when most of my family visited at the same time, we went to the go cart track and raced with the kids. 

But thanks to our dear friend Susan’s visit, and the few days off I took while she was here, we began to think about a return to Chatham this summer. We’ll just go for a week this time. Happily it coincides with a visit by our son and daughter in law and our grand baby. We just couldn’t refuse the opportunity to make another trip to the home of our Boston Red Sox.

This year we will be there for a shorter time; later planning resulted in a different  and smaller rental house. There probably won’t be time for a whale watching trip, but hopefully enough time to linger a bit with friends and family. We’ll celebrate Father’s Day with the newest father in the group, our son.

There will be time to drag my freshly painted toes in the sand-the polish I picked last week was labeled “feel the bern.” There will be the pleasure of introducing our newest tribe member to the summer Cape experience. What could be better than a teething baby with sand in her diaper. Ahhh. Life is so good.